Tag Archives: Ingenuity Studios

Hollywood-based VFX house Ingenuity Studios recently worked on a 60-second Super Bowl spot for agency Pereira & O’Dell promoting Fox Sports’ coverage of the Daytona 500, which takes place on February 26. The ad, directed by Joseph Kahn, features people from all over the country gearing up to watch the Daytona 500, including footage from NASCAR races, drivers and, for some reason, actor James Van Der Beek.

The Ingenuity team had only two weeks to turn around this VFX-heavy spot, called Daytona Day. Some CG elements include a giant robot, race cars and crowds. While they were working on the effects, Fox was shooting footage in Charlotte, North Carolina and Los Angeles.

“When we were initially approached about this project we knew the turnaround would be a challenge,” explains creative director/VFX supervisor Grant Miller. “Editorial wasn’t fully locked until Thursday before the big game! With such a tight deadline preparing as much as we could in advance was key.”

Portions of the shoot took place at the Daytona Speedway, and since it was an off day the stadium and infield were empty. “In preparation, our CG team built the entire Daytona stadium while we were still shooting, complete with cheering CG crowds, RVs filling the interior, pit crews, etc.,” says Miller. “This meant that once shots were locked we simply needed to track the camera, adjust the lighting and render all the stadium passes for each shot.”

Additional shooting took place at the Charlotte Motor Speedway, Downtown Los Angeles and Pasadena, California.

In addition to prepping CG for set extensions, Ingenuity also got a head start on the giant robot that shows up halfway through the commercial. “Once the storyboards were approved and we were clear on the level of detail required, we took our ‘concept bot’ out of ZBrush, retopologized and unwrapped it, then proceeded to do surfacing and materials in Substance Painter. While we had some additional detailing to do, we were able to get the textures 80 percent completed by applying a variety of procedural materials to the mesh, saving a ton of manual painting.”

Other effects work included over 40 CG NASCAR vehicles to fill the track, additional cars for the traffic jam and lots of greenscreen and roto work to get the scenes shot in Charlotte into Daytona. There was also a fair bit of invisible work that included cleaning up sets, removing rain, painting out logos, etc.

Other tools used include Autodesk’s Maya, The Foundry’s Nuke and BorisFX’s Mocha.